unbeing (for a time)
About the Piece
Instrumentation: Sinfonietta
Duration: ~ 19 minutes
© 2021
Commissioned by: The New Juilliard Ensemble
This was The Egg by Andy Weir, which has since been shared all across social media, translated into thirty languages, adapted into youtube videos, and re-posted on reddit a countless number of times. For the next ten years this thousand word short story was glued to my brain, popping into my consciousness at least once a week. Something about living through 2020 and the seemingly global struggle to realize and remember the humanity of every single person around us finally sparked the idea to create a version of the story with music. At first I even thought of turning it into a single scene opera, but I felt that the gleefully frank and everyday tone of this cosmic and profound text would be lost.
I won't say much more about the plot here, since I feel the piece is best experienced for the first time with as little expectation as possible, but I do hope that this work will help listeners reflect on the nature of their connection to each life around them, their place within the world, and their consciousness within reality.
Program note:
This piece is a musical telling of The Egg by celebrated author Andy Weir. This is an early work of Weir’s but nevertheless an extremely impactful one. I distinctly remember a night around 2010, sitting bored in my apartment, browsing the internet for anything remotely interesting, when I found myself reading a short story that completely changed my outlook on life. It was full of ideas that were entirely familiar, almost mundane, but somehow lent a perspective on what it means to be human that I had never quite encountered before.
Premiere performance with The New Juilliard Ensemble and narration by Marianna Gailus
Chamber version commissioned 2022 by the Charles Ives Music Festival